Unique Identification Authority of India

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in 2009, as an attached office to the Planning Commission now an attached office of Ministry of Electronics and IT with a vision, “To empower residents of India with a unique identity and a digital platform to authenticate anytime, anywhere”.

A key objective of the Aadhaar programme is to provide an identity infrastructure for the delivery of various social welfare programmes and for effective targeting of welfare services. The potential of Aadhaar can be realized through its use of the infrastructure as an ID proof and as a unique key by various state departments, central ministries, PSUs, and private sector entities to provide service delivery to residents in an integrated fashion. 

In order to carry forward the programmes and schemes, there are various organizations which come under the jurisdiction of MeitY and these are given here.

Digital Locker is a key initiative under Digital India, the Government of  India’s flagship programme, aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Targeted at the idea of paperless governance, Digital Locker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents and certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. Indian residents, who sign up for a DigiLocker account, get a  dedicated cloud storage space. Organisations that are registered with Digital Locker can push electronic copies of documents and certificates (e.g. driving license, school certificates) directly into citizens’ lockers. Citizens can also upload scanned copies of their legacy documents in their accounts. These legacy documents can be electronically signed using the eSign facility.

UMANG

Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG) has been developed and launched in 2017 as a single mobile platform to deliver major government services. UMANG’s core platform is integrated with Aadhaar, DigiLocker, PayGov, Rapid Assessment System (RAS), etc. Citizens can access pan India government services from the central government, state governments, local bodies and their agencies. It supports 12 Indian languages, in addition to English and has been hosted on cloud. UMANG aims to bring power to the finger tips of citizens.

 

National Knowledge Network

National Knowledge Network (NKN) was established in 2010. The objective of the NKN is to interconnect all institutions of higher learning and research with a high-speed data communication network to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaborative research.

 

Since its establishment, the NKN has developed progressively to ensure that Indian researchers excel and also lead international and global collaboration.

NKN is the largest network of its kind in the world and is currently perceived as a leading research and education network (REN) globally. NKN is the only network globally, that carries research and evaluation, Internet and e-Governance traffic as three independent verticals under one umbrella. NKN facilitates Digital India, as it is the backbone for all e-Governance initiatives in the country. In addition to educational Institutes, NKN connects all SDCs (State Data Centre), NDCs (National Data Centre), ministries and departments across the government.